Growing up simultaneously: realism and recessions in Chile by Gabriel Boric

Chile is experiencing an interesting mutation within the very change that triggered the popular rebellion in 2019. In similar quotas of Baglini’s theorem, about moderation imposed by close to power, and the verification of situations beyond expectations, president Gabriel Boric, exponent of that popular denial, regresses to a new realism.

Circumstances force it. Recently confirming that there is no possible dialogue in the face of growing violence in Mapuche or in the face of the recessions surrounding or, at least, threatening to project a new Constitution.

Boric suffered the worst political and ideological defeat so far in his government when he had to send his Interior Minister to announce that he would repeat the standard of his predecessor, right-wing Sebastián Piñera, declaring an exception to the constitution. for assign troops to southern Chile. A decision he has opposed since his campaign and he was hurt when he came to La Moneda.

The measure is overshadowed by the alleged limitation on the surveillance of uniformed officers only on routes and passages in the area where Mapuche extremism makes its attacks. But the command itself dilutes the brakes throughout the region and on infrastructure “as needed.”

A specific analysis would describe that move as a move to the right of government. But Boric is a pragmatic social democrat. He had already exposed that condition in November 2019 when, in the midst of a crisis due to street protests, he negotiated alone with the Pinochet Independent Democratic Union to open the way to a Constituent Assembly before losing control of the things.

take over

That deal turned out to be a multi-party deal that Boric’s own supporters branded as a betrayal. But that courage sustains the system.

The interesting fact today about the bitter pill of militarization of southern Chile is the act of authority that accompanies it. The rule in any case is the management. An obvious less clear on other boundaries of the region.

But this stance against his own ideas indicates for Boric a growing tension in the view of the populist wing of his coalition, particularly the Communist Party, which gives him a significant territorial base.

The PC, by the way, rejects this proposal with distances from a commentator. “This is not the time to involve the Armed Forces. in this conflict, which is political, social and involves some kind of violent activity and there will be a bad reaction ”, said the leader of the communist party, Guillermo Tellier.

The Mapuche question is more than it seems. It has strong political content. One of the flags of the political identity of this new leadership is the diversion from the right or center-right that has governed the fate of Chile in recent decades, even in the face of moderate but strict European-style socialism.

Camila Vallejo, a staunch ally of Boric, a militant PC and government spokesperson, in her days as parliamentarian argued about this conflict in the south that “when conflicts are handled like a war, there is no peace and only bloodshed … Use intelligence and not weapons ”, he asked..

The president himself, in his former role as legislator, continued to deny parliamentary authorization for the constitutional exception demanded by Piñera.

Boric was seated in power with a stance on promoting a definite discussion among indigenous communities. Consistent, in addition, offer basic signals such as generating a multinational view of the country in the new Constitution .

But on the other hand there is no interest in negotiations. Interior Minister Izkia Siches were greeted by gunfire at the new assumption, he traveled to the community of Temucuicui, in Ercilla, with his proposal for dialogue under his arm. That episode is the sign of how this misunderstanding will develop.

The newspaper Thirdexplained that “in the ruling coalition they make sure La Moneda handles alarming figures about the increase in acts of violence in the area.”

At that frequency, the head of the self -proclaimed Arauco Malleco Coordinator, Héctor Llaitul, took advantage of the government’s intelligence to call for “armed resistance” and disqualified Boric as “lacking” nothing less than military dictatorship. A slam with no mitigating.

Communist senator Daniel Núñez, had to acknowledge his discomfort because these organizations did not provide even the slightest opportunity for the government to deploy their proposals. And he made a significant comparison by arguing that “when movements of an ethnic or nationalist nature have become radical to the extreme, we have reached dead ends, as happened in Spain, with ETA.”

Plebiscite

It’s like this, millimeters from nature of terrorism where Boric escapes where they describe the forces of the center and especially the right to what has been going on in those regions for years. In the most painful perspective, this conflict effectively has the format of a separatist war on a territory that includes a large part of Argentine Patagonia.

Another challenge that exacerbates Chile and the president himself because of the massive deposits of political capital he has invested, is the uneven process of the Constitution. On September 4, a referendum was held, the so -called “exit the plebiscite” which will determine whether citizens agree with the content of the new Magna Carta.

But if that initiative has exciting support of approximately 80% in October 2020, the latest polls (i.e. Pulso Ciudadano) indicate a decline of 45.6%, with only 27.1% of those approved. Those who don’t know are competing with this last record with 27.4%. Meanwhile, the lack of trust in the usual, is more than 50%.

The purpose of the new Charter, which is due to end on July 5, is to replace the legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship. This refoundation machine is the one that needs to be corrected disgusting deformations in the chilean accumulation model of very high concentration and filters the educational or health possibilities of the majority.

But the constitutional project was born with a weakness: the right and middle left parties got lower representation than expected. The independents, who had achieved a broad bloc, a reflection of the decline in traditional politics, quickly dissolved. That fact means a lot.

Those who remained operated on included “the false illusion that it can be done without the right, without the middle and part of the middle on the left”, as directed in BBC the political activist Javiera Parada, who denounces sectarianism and polarization in the process.

One of the initiatives approved without the support of the right or some representatives of the left center is, for example, the so -called “legal pluralism”, which allowing the creation of courts for indigenous peoples who will coexist on an “equal plane” in the National Justice System. For his critics, naturally, this measure violates equality before the law.

The violence plaguing southern Chile is increasing the dose of contamination with these types of initiatives, which are controversial in themselves and in a country where inflation and crime they demand priority attention before other debates. Reasons, possibly, for Boric’s dramatic drop in polls.

Another controversial proposal burdens the administration of the new Constitution, decision of the conventionalists to end the 200-year term of the Senate and crown in its place a kind of confused Chamber of Regions.

The center-right and the right, but also socialism, that is, more than half of the Chilean electorate, oppose this invention, which is even condemned as absurd by relevant figures such as Isabel Allende, the daughter of the mythical Salvador Allende.

These setbacks do not necessarily ensure the failure of the constitutional project. Even for many of his critics, voting against indicates a failure in keeping the Pinochet Charter in effect. Boric bet on that discomfort to maintain the initiative. But nor does it eliminate a recession as happened in the Mapuche conflict.

This uncertainty makes sense, it emerges from the freshness of a strong caution that has been noticeable since the national election and that is moderating the message of the rebellion in 2019. But also, very importantly, in children of that process. Nothing like before. Nor are illusions. Suddenly grew up
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